Managing Virtual Machines

 

 

How to Unregister a Virtual Machine in the vCenter Server Inventory
The following steps will show you how to unregister a virtual machine from the VMware vCenter Server inventory.

  1. If the VMware vSphere Client is not already active, use it to log in to your vCenter Server system with the domain administrator user name and password.
  2. Go to Home > Inventory > VMs and Templates.
  3. In your Temporary VMs folder, right-click your virtual machine and select Remove from Inventory. *Caution: Do not select Delete from Disk. That operation is not recoverable.
  4. Click Yes to confirm the removal and verify that your virtual machine no longer appears in the inventory.



 

How to Register a Virtual Machine in the vCenter Server Inventory
The following steps will register the virtual machine that you removed from the inventory in the steps above.

  1. 1. In the right pane of the Datastore Browser, right-click your .vmx and select Add to Inventory.
  2. 2. When prompted by the Add to Inventory wizard, do the following:
    1. Type in a name. In the Inventory Location pane, select your TemporaryVMs folder. (Name and Location)
    2. Select your VMware ESXi host. (Host/Cluster)
    3. Click Finish. (Ready to Complete)

 

 

 

How to Unregister and Delete Virtual Machine from Disk
The following steps will show you how to delete all virtual machines in the TemporaryVMs folder that are assigned to it.

  1. 1. Right-click your virtual machine and select Delete from Disk.
  2. 2. Click Yes to confirm the deletion and verify that your virtual machine no longer appears in the inventory.

 



How to Take Snapshots of a Virtual Machine
The following steps will show you how to create a snapshot tree of a virtual machine.

  1. Right-click your virtual machine and select Power > Power On.
  2. Right-click the virtual machine and select Snapshot > Take Snapshot.
  3. When prompted by the Take Virtual Machine Snapshot wizard, do the following:
    1. Type “<your name> Base Image”. (Name)
    2. Type With cpubusy.vbs. (Description)
    3. Leave selected. (Snapshot the virtual machine’s memory)
    4. Leave unselected. (Quiesce guest file system (Needs VMware Tools installed)
  4. Click OK and monitor the task in Recent Tasks pane.
  5. Right-click the virtual machine and select Open Console.
  6. Log in as user Administrator.
  7. Drag the cpubus.vbs file to the Recycle Bin. To completely remove the cpubusy.vbs file, empty Recycle Bin. Leave the virtual machine console open.
  8. Right-click the virtual machine in the inventory and select Snapshot > Take Snapsho
  9. When the Take Virtual Machine Snapshot wizard appears, do the following:
    1. Type <your_name> Snapshot 2. (Name)
    2. Type  Without cpubusy.vbs. (Description)
    3. Leave selected. (Snapshot the virtual machine’s memory)
    4. Leave unselected. (Quiesce guest file system (Needs VMware Tools installed))
  10. Click OK and monitor the task in Recent Tasks pane.
  11. After task has completed, right-click virtual machine and select Snapshot > Snapshot Manager.
  12. Select each snapshot in the snapshot hierarchy and view its name and description.



 

How to Revert to a Snapshot
The following steps will show you how to revert a virtual machine to an earlier snapshot.

  1. In Snapshot Manager, select your snapshot and select Go To.
  2. Click Yes to confirm you want to revert to <file_name> Base Image.
  3. When task is completed, view the Snapshot Manager and notice that the “You arehere” icon is now positioned under the earlier <file_name> Base Image snapshot.
  4. Click Close to close Snapshot Manager.



 

Migrate Virtual Machine Files with Storage vMotion
The following steps will show you how to relocate virtual machine files from one datastore to another datastore with VMware Storage vMotion.

  1. Right-click your virtual machine in the inventory and select Migrate.
  2. Do the following when prompted by the Migrate Virtual wizard:
    1. Leave default. (Select Migration Type)
    2. Select VMFS datastore to migrate to. (Select Datastore)
    3. Keep default Disk Format.
    4. Click Finish.
  3. You can monitor the progress of the task in Recent Tasks pane.
  4. After task in finished, click Summary tab to verify that your virtual machine is on the new datastore.